I Eat Plants: Dinner at Recologie in New Rochelle

Last month, I had the opportunity to visit Recologie in New Rochelle for a sting before the opening of their new restaurant space and dinner menu.

You may recall that I visited Recologielast year for a MeetUp brunch. At the time, their dining space was very small and in more or less in their retail space. Their dining room is new and beautiful and full of art and beautiful touches!

While I love non-vegetarian restaurants that offer vegetarian and vegan dishes, I am even more in love with the fact that Recologie is an all vegetarian restaurant. It is not entirely vegan; you may find dishes with dairy, eggs and honey, but meat and fish you will not find. They are very vegan friendly, and are conscious of making sure that vegan dishes are easily identifiable.

Since the menu does include a few non-vegan ingredients, I wasn’t able to try all of the dishes, but what I had was amazing.

We started out with two types of soup: Spicy Ethiopian Lentil Stew and a black bean soup.

I must say, the Ethiopian Lentil Stew was my favorite dish of the night, and a wonderful way to start. The black bean soup was filling and delicious, with a perfect velvety texture.

Kale Salad with Apples and a Ginger Dressing was up next.

After soups and salad, Moroccan Empanadas. I am not usually a big fan of eggplant, but I really liked it in the empanada filling. Not at all bitter, and rounded out by spices and raisins and an apple chutney.

I wasn’t able to try the next dish as it contained cheese (not pictured). The fontina-chickpea fritters were served with a vanilla tomato sauce that smelled absolutely amazing. The rest of the table seemed pretty impressed. I now have dreams of making my own tomato sauce with vanilla…

The Polenta Terrine was also delicious. For anyone who knows me, you know that I don’t like mushrooms, but I really enjoyed the mushroom ragu. Sometimes you get surprised, you know? Unfortunately, the carrots on top (but not the curried carrot sauce) were dressed with a honey-vinaigrette. The chef was able to give me another dish without the dressing, so all was well, but that dish is not pictured.

Finally, dessert.

I’m sometimes easily overwhelmed with chocolate, and when I saw the dessert dish, I really didn’t think I’d be able to eat it. (I was a little under the weather). While it was rich, it was light enough for my taste buds. I was completely in love with the ginger cookies, shown on the side. They were powerful, but just right.

Thank you to Recologie for hosting this tasting, and thank you to chefs Ihsaana Muhammad, Giovanni Green d’Amour and Sonia Urban for making such delicious food!

Recologie is now serving dinner from 5P-9P Thursdays through Saturdays. You can find Recologie at 49 Lawton Street, New Rochelle. So excited to have another veg restaurant in the Lower Hudson Valley!

About Author

I Eat Plants columnist Jodie Deignan went vegetarian in 2004 and fully committed to veganism in 2007. By day she’s a psychiatric nurse practitioner and by night she spends a lot of time cooking delicious vegan food for herself and her friends. She’s a bit of a picky eater, with a special distaste for mushrooms, seaweed, raw tomatoes, and eggplant, though she’s discovered along the way she’s a little more open-minded than she once thought. She blogs at The Picky Vegan.